 Well, good morning everyone. I hope you're all doing well this morning. Thank you for joining us as we announce the location of Army Futures Command. It is a new organization that epitomizes our commitment to bold reform and to transforming the Army's modernization process. The creation of Army Futures Command constitutes the Army's most significant reorganization effort since 1973, when the Army created US Army Forces Command and Army Training and Doctrine Command. That reorganization was driven by a realization that the Army, emerging from years of irregular warfare, was ill-prepared to defeat Soviet forces in a high-intensity conflict in Europe. Our equipment, doctrine, and training methods had become outdated. Those reforms resulted in the Big Five combat systems, air-land battle doctrine, improved training, including the creation of the National Training Center, and increased professionalism throughout our Army. That transformation created the Army that helped win the Cold War, defeated Iraq in the Gulf War, and served our nation well for a generation. Today, the Army once again faces a strategic inflection point. To address these challenges, the National Defense Strategy calls for, quote, a more lethal, resilient, and rapidly innovating force. And last month, in support of the NDS, General Millie and I released the Army Vision. Our vision describes the Army of 2028, one that is ready to deploy, fight, and win decisively against any adversary, anytime, anywhere. That Army will employ modern, manned, and unmanned ground combat vehicles, aircraft, sustainment systems, and weapons, and it will be centered on exceptional leaders and soldiers of unmatched lethality. Army Futures Command will help us achieve this vision. AFC will establish unity of command and unity of effort by consolidating the Army's entire modernization process under one roof. It will turn ideas into actions through experimenting, prototyping, and testing. Most importantly, it will directly incorporate requirements from the warfighter and provide soldiers the weapons and equipment they need when they need them. Army Futures Command can only achieve this in a location that combines top-tier academic institutions, cutting-edge industry, and an innovative private sector with a culture required to fuel our Army's modernization effort. For this reason, the Army will locate Army Futures Command headquarters in Austin, Texas. The Army chose Austin as a location for the AFC headquarters because it not only possessed the talent, the entrepreneurial spirit, and access to key partners we are seeking, but also because it offers the quality of life our people desire and the cost of living they can afford. I'm certain that Austin is the right location for Army Futures Command, yet this selection was nonetheless a difficult and weighty choice among a number of America's greatest cities. I would like to invite the Under Secretary of Army, Ryan McCarthy, to walk you through the steps we followed to reach this decision. But before I do that, I want to commend Ryan on his excellent work leading this effort, traveling to each of the cities and coordinating closely with military, civic, and private sector leadership. He personally ensured that this process would be both rigorous and fair. And once he's provided you more specifics on the selection process, we'll take your questions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. First, I want to thank each of the cities, Austin, Boston, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Philadelphia, and Raleigh, Durham, for graciously hosting the Army for two very short notice visits and for the generous amount of time that their leaders gave to us. The state and city elected officials, congressional delegations, private sector entities, university faculty and staff, and countless support staff were all tremendously welcoming and accommodating to our team. It's truly a wonderful reminder of the support the Army has across the nation. As our advanced team briefed their findings from each of the five finalists, we've realized we needed a senior leader to see each of the city for ourselves to properly evaluate and visualize how the future's command headquarters would integrate into each footprint. And I could not be more impressed with the American ingenuity, entrepreneurial spirit and innovative drive we witnessed in each location. The choice is very difficult, but we ultimately had to make a choice that was best for the U.S. Army. Based on the following criteria, we developed a model with the use of an outside firm, validated it through our own internal studies and analysis, as well as a federally funded research and development center, and then narrowed our search to five locations based on the following criteria, proximity to STEM workers and industries, proximity to private sector innovation, academic STEM and R&D investment, quality of life, availability costs and time assessment, and assessment of civic support. As we looked at each city beyond the metrics that drove us to the five places, we envisioned how each city ecosystem would support from our modernization effort and priorities vertically, from concept to capability to solution. We do not have time to build this ecosystem. It need to be ready immediately. And in fact, we have a team in route as I speak. Based on that, we determined the city we have the following characteristics. Mature entrepreneurial incubator hubs that give our leaders placement and access to talent, ideas, collaboration and a willingness to help us build the culture we need. Space and access to a top tier university system, science and engineering department, where our engineers and collaborative teams can support experiments, prototype concepts and systems, expandability for other services and companies to join our efforts as we build solutions that meet the concept of how the Army will fight and multi-domain operations, density of industry and academic talent, and the cost of doing business to enable both new startups and to draw established tech firms. Meeting the purpose of the Army Futures Command requires us to move from behind the walls of traditional posts and forts and place ourselves in the middle of an urban center. This is where collaboration, networking and innovation is happening daily at rates that cannot be duplicated on an Army post or an industrial park. Following the principle of the Allen curve, shrinking the distance between the Army's workforce and innovators is important to increase communication, drive the change and bring the speed of our organizational goals to life. Establishing an Army headquarters outside of posts with a diverse mission to interface with industry and academia is a radical cultural change for us. Establishing this headquarters in the city of Austin, Texas will force the Army to lean on American ingenuity and business entrepreneurs to help us through rapid and rapid innovation. To challenge our status quo and to inculcate in ourselves and a collaborative community of people that live to solve complex problems. In closing, as AFC personnel transitioned to Austin, I want to assure that we'll keep focus where it has always been on finding ways to develop cost efficient, timely innovative system that leverages this country's technological expertise and get major weapons systems in formations as that's the only metric that matters. Rob. Thank you. At this time we'll go into Q&A and we'll start with the Lita Balder Associated Press. Good morning, Lita Balder with AP. We're either Espar or McCarthy. How much is this going to cost and what did you get from the city and from the universities to help offset some of the costs as there are donations of buildings or can you outline sort of the package that you got from the city and the state and for General Milley, speaking of the future, as you know there was an insider attack in Afghanistan and I think that this is an important enough subject that it should be addressed. S-FAB's security personnel were attacked. Can you talk about what you think may or may not be necessary for changes in the future for the S-FABs as they continue to get out more to train and advise the Afghans? Sir, before you start, Lita, I would just remind you and the entire group here, we're really here today to talk about Future's Command and that stationing decision. So we'd like to keep it on top. We don't ever get to see these people. Again, we can take your question and get back to you on that later. Yes, sir. Sir. Lita, specifically to the command, this is an army's industrial age process and we're trying to move the information age so this restructuring is helping us design an army that can move at the speed of innovation. So the size of the command and complexity of the command is not a pure Apple to Apples comparison. Right now we're looking at roughly the same cost as the other major commands. The other major commands have about 675 personnel in its command group headquarters. The Future's Command is just slightly below that. We're looking at about 500, but different skill sets, different footprint. Leasing property. With respect to incentives, incentives were offered by the state of Texas. We're working through the implementation details right now and I'm not really in a position right now to release that information, but we will shortly. Jennifer Griffin, Fox. I'd like to take this. What message is this sending to China and Russia right now forming this force? Is this a modern-day Manhattan project? And I'm afraid I'm going to have to agree with Lita. We don't have an opportunity to see you enough. General Milley, have you reached out to your counterparts in Europe after the NATO summit to reassure them that the U.S. forces are staying? Again, ladies and gentlemen, I remind you, we're here today to talk about the stationing decision for Future's Command. I'll take your question, Jennifer. This decision is driven by a number of things, not least of which, that we recognize that in today's strategic environment, the Army needs to be able to develop ideas, design, test, and then procure and fill a lot more quickly than we have in the past and a lot better cost. And that is all, of course, reinforced by the release of the National Defense Strategy earlier this year. And of course, the Chief and I put out the decision a couple months ago or last month. And so we recognize that regardless of who our strategic competitors are, but particularly because we've identified Russia and China, we need to be able to, again, give our soldiers the tools, the weapons, the equipment they need when they need it. And in this day and age, it means a lot more quickly than what we've done in the past. Is there a specific threat from Russia and China that this is addressing? I think what we've done in terms of the process, in terms of the Army's priorities for modernization, what we've looked at is across those strategic competitors, we've identified particular areas where we need to improve our capabilities. So it begins with long-range fires, future vertical lift, next-generation combat vehicle, et cetera, all the way down to soldier lethality. So what modernization entails with regard to Army Futures Command will place those where they are, the top six priorities, and then continue to drive those until we are filled with those systems we need. And, Jennifer, relative to Russia and China, I think we all recognize that Russia and China are improving their military capabilities, and that we have been involved in a war against terrorists, guerrillas, and surgeons now for going on 15, 16, 17 years. With respect to the Army, what that has meant is that we set aside major modernization programs in order to fight the current fight. As those fights have wound down, we made a conscious decision two, two and a half, almost three years ago now to maintain readiness for the current fight as our number one priority, which that will maintain, but also to shift gears and re-energize our modernization effort. We analyzed that closely and we decided we needed to restructure the corporation, so to speak, in order to achieve greater speed, de-layer the organization in order to reduce bureaucracy, not increase bureaucracy, and in order to get there first is with the most is with the best technology available in the hands of the soldiers. That analysis led us to certain gaps which Secretary just referred to, and that led us then to our priorities, which long-range precision fires all the way down through soldier lethality. And that's what this command is designed to do, bring unity of command, speed, relevance of action, and the outputs, the products, the results will be seen in the years to come, but I think it'll be very, very beneficial on you and Lolita's other questions. I'll be happy to answer those in a different form, be happy to do that in their excellent questions and they're very, very relevant, but we want to stay focused today on the futures command, but I'll be happy to get with you off to the side and give you answers to those questions that you asked. Okay, we'll work our way around the room. Bloomberg? Hi, Roxana Turan with Bloomberg. Quick question. How quickly are people going to move to Austin, Texas, for futures command and, you know, basically how quickly do you expect a relocation and if you could sort of roll into the cost a little bit more. I mean, you mentioned about 500 people. What estimates are you working with? Again, I'll let the under-speak to the mechanics. As I mentioned in my opening statement, we have essentially a beachhead team that is on in route today and they'll begin working the implementation details associated with establishing the footprint. With respect to the incentives that were provided by the state that they're working through that now so we don't have ink on the app, but we have the offer on the table. So we'll be able to release those details later. With respect to the cost, I had said roughly on par with the same major commands, TRADOC, AMC, and FORCECOM. And how quickly are you expecting to relocate? When do you see, you know, the entire command being stood up? How quickly are you going to relocate? I think the plane lands in a couple hours. So those folks are there now. We're getting beginning work now. So with respect to how many people over time we will establish right now we're what's called initial operating capability and we're going to work through that structure over the course of this year and a full operational capability by next summer. So we'll ramp the personnel from nearly today into next summer and be in the upwards of 500 personnel in the command group. How many people are today? I think about a half a dozen. We'll move over to Dan Lamoth, Washington Post. Gentlemen, thanks for your time today. If I can just, but one point though, many of the organizations that will move underneath the AMC group are operating today and have been for some time, most notably across functional teams. So it is in many ways a matter of rewiring the organizational structure, but the actual physical movement of people is as the under outlined just to be clarified. Sorry, Dan. We often hear that the Army in particular and really the services across the board are too reliant on the south for recruits and for other things culturally. This was an opportunity to put a pretty high profile command in the Northeast, up the Canadian border in Philadelphia, something like that. You went to Texas. Can you speak to why? Particularly maybe as it relates to cost of living because that sort of sticks out as maybe something that factored in more highly here now that we haven't answered. I'll speak to the big picture and again I'll let the under speak the criteria because he worked most directly on that and how we assess things, but look, this is a major organizational change, 45 years, and it will have important implications for the Army and we believe it will really do what we're asking it to do to deliver soldiers the tools, weapons, and equipment they need when they need it. What's important is getting the right place and devoid of kind of those other considerations. The right place was based on some of the criteria that the under outlined is where is the talent, where is that innovative spirit, where can we be able to best access academia and industry and nontraditional industry. At the same time you have to have a place that can accommodate a good quality of life, good quality of living, because these are Army employees, and so we have to balance those out, but we didn't go into this saying, oh well we need something up here in that part of the country or this part of the country. What we try to do is find the best place for the Army for the mission for our people. Let's go to Tom in the back of the room there. Actually this follows up on Dan's question. Sorry, did you want to respond, sir? I was thinking in terms of, there's been some pushback to the military and generally from places like Google and other private sectors about working with the military. How much of an issue was this uncovered in your search, and to Dan's point did the Austin opportunity present a lower sort of threat of pushback from the private sector? Of the five cities that I visited and we started with 150, we neck down to five. It was overwhelming the level of support and the desire that all five of these cities, these MSAs, wanted us to be there. And I can't emphasize that enough. So I didn't feel that at all. Yes, I do. So just from that standpoint all five of them went out of their way. They've been over backwards to help us to get us through the due diligence to make this decision. With respect to the specific why it landed, I laid six variables. Austin scored the highest. And all six of them mattered and we started with the two broad categories of academia and business. And some things that we look at is not only the academic STEM and R&D talent associated with that footprint, but also the incubator hubs. And the entrepreneurial investment and startups was a big part of our decision criteria. So this was data driven. Jeff? This is a question for all of you. I'm not an acquisition reporter. So I'm hoping you can explain in layman's terms how creating a new command will make sure that the problems that ended up killing future combat systems do not recur. I'll speak to the broad, the wine, and I'll let the under tackle the second part and he has some experience in this. So first of all, one of the challenges we've had over the years and this has been chronicled through expert witnesses and testimony and studies is that we need to improve accountability and that we need to achieve greater unity of effort and unity of purpose. Right now the Army modernization enterprise is spread out over a number of commands and organizations. You can see it because we are moving parts of those underneath AFC. And so when you have a system that is spread out like that and disconnected, you cannot achieve those purposes I spoke to and so what AFC does is promise to deliver those things and what that means is you now have a single commander in charge of everything from the future force design and concepts all the way through how we spend our RDT and E-Dollars to the prototyping and testing and soldier involvement into acquisition and ultimately to fielding. One person now in charge of delivering all that so that guarantees a great deal more speed, a great deal more efficiency in terms of delivery of product and a singularity of focus in this case on the modernization priorities we outlined earlier to really again deliver what the soldiers need when they need it. I don't add that I was serving in OSD at the time specifically in the Secretary of Defense's office because it was there when he terminated the program and what you saw the fundamental flaws associated with it was that the operational concept and the technical concepts were not linked that the clarity of the requirements and what was technologically feasible at the time and how you spiral that capability in coupled with the fact that the concepts changed over time so it continually protracted and lost money and then it was difficult to yield or harvest any content when they terminated the program so the points that the Secretary was making when you have all of the responsibilities associated with weapons systems development, a requirement, an experiment research and development, prototyping weapons systems and ultimately going out and buying capability that was spread out it is spread out across most of the commands in the Army and include headquarters of the Department of the Army so think thousands of people spread all over the place just emailing each other so that's why span time of moving information through the system when we established the cross-functional teams last fall you essentially brought the stakeholders together created formal relationships fused information faster and reduced span time to getting decisions and then cut the number of layers between the information and the leadership and these cross-functional teams have been reporting to General McConville and I for the last really since the October time frame and then they will be embedded in the command line going forward really when you looked at the restructuring it was a simple business case problem all of the tasks were spread out and now we are trying to fuse them together the other thing to think about is how you get to the future over the last 16, 17 years we have been very very focused on the presence because we have been in combat type operations so as you look to the future you can incrementally work your way to the future and start from where you are at or you can have people thinking about the future out in the future they develop the concepts they look at the technology they work side by side and they come up with the type of material that will need to be successful in the future and then you work your way back and that is what future command is going to allow us to do let me go back a little bit here we are in the midst of a change in the very character of war and we don't and didn't have an organization that was dedicated to that that is important so what we have is trade-off forces command and army material command trade-off principally looked to a lot of the things that we are talking about with AFC and then AMC did a lot of the other piece with their research development and experimental commands and they had scientists and labs and so on and so forth but it was spread out as both secretaries spread out all over the place and no one was solely dedicated into the deep future and determine the implications to the United States Army and the conduct of ground combat for this changing character of war that we are coming to grips with and we needed to dedicate a single organization to do that and thereby streamline and consolidate and bring unity of command and purpose for the army to the development of our future capabilities and that's the why that's the reason that goes back several years that we've been thinking about this and now we're bringing it into reality so it will I think our analysis indicates it will avoid a lot of pitfalls of previous program failures etc but that's the reason why this is coming into into being right now thank you sir we'll go to Christina thank you so much will you be working with or what types of technology in Austin and this kind of goes back to Dan and Tom's question how do you plan to overcome some of that skepticism from the tech industry do you plan to go to campuses invite students on the command how will you reach out to the broader community and not sort of hunker down or let me try and tackle the first part briefly Mr. Secretary McCarthy the chief made a very important point here and that is the character of war is fundamentally changing and I've stated publicly before is whoever gets there first will have unmatched lethality on the battlefield for years to come and so we have some critical technologies out there that are essential to fulfilling our six modernization priorities whether it's directed energy for air and missile defense whether it's hypersonics for long range precision fires or whether it's robotics and artificial intelligence for next generation combat vehicle so that's why this is so critical to get out there to get amongst the innovative again the culture of innovation get among companies not just the traditional defense companies but all companies who are working cutting-edge particularly in these areas to make sure that we can get there first with this type of equipment weapons system so that's why this is so critical and that's why it's called futures command because we are dealing with future future war fighting so from a how we'll have office space in downtown Austin for our command group the senior leadership but we're going to put personnel in incubator hubs and what was unique about all five of these cities they all have very established incubator hubs where entrepreneurs you just walk in the room there'll be a sea of laptops and you see them trampering away and then over their heads you'll see a GM emblem or Ryan McCarthy Incorporated and you see out in the economy right now that there's the strength of entrepreneurism in these incubator hubs is really challenging big corporations and they're worried about disruption so they're all moving into this we've seen in the defense industry lately the growth of venture capital arms within major defense firms it's showing the strength of the economy and how entrepreneurs are disrupting and this provides us an opportunity to work with them see what's available and help work with them and partner with larger institutions some things I talk about all the time some of the greatest successes in the department Bantam car company that developed the Jeep partnered with Ford Motor Company built 600,000 of them during World War II it's that type of solutions that we're trying to drive towards we will literally have soldiers and army civilians right there with them and they'll have their army emblem over their laptop so ladies and gentlemen we have time for a few more questions so I'm going to take Louie and then we'll work on Charles on the other side of the room Louie Martinez with ABC thanks again for doing this in talking about innovation I think one of the things that is commonly perceived is that the US military is kind of clunky and it's bureaucracy but it's a little slow to the curve how do you mesh this innovation as Secretary McCarthy is talking about you're dealing with innovators who are used to moving very quickly how do you adjust your culture to deal with that so that you can put these weapons systems out into the field faster we do have to overcome bureaucracy we do have to improve our processes all that is underway I think what we have to do is bring that now then the next part is key leaders people who have a reform mindset persons who look at product over process and I think we have some key leaders right now on the team that view it that way and I'm confident that the first commander of the Army Futures Command will take that approach so you look at the organization you look at processes, you look at leaders and over time as you develop wins, as you get wins the culture starts to change and that is the hardest thing to change but that's what we're committed to doing and the way you do that to the point that the under made earlier and I think we're all making is partly the way you enable cultural change is to put the organization in an environment where such a culture already exists where they can help drive that cultural change forward kind of show its merits and successes and then help us again put those wins on the board the culture of the US military in many ways writ large there are exceptions to this but in many ways we are an industrial age organization and our systems are in many ways built during a period of time which they are linear and progressive and hierarchical and in some cases stovepipe this is an attempt by the United States Army to break through that and to bring us into the 21st century in our organizations our processes and our leadership and thereby this organization will help change the culture of the army itself there are niche organizations within the military across all the services that do this already this is one to try to change the culture of an entire service and how we approach acquisition procurement material concept development and all of that the research technology science technology and the research and development for that this is an organizational attempt that will impact leaders organizations and processes to try to drive us to man train and equip the army to fight the next war not the last war and this is a very very important initiative for us a bit of a red flag caution IOC initial operating capability is essentially what we are announcing today the location of the command we set FOC full operational capability for a year from now it will take another year once the commander is announced once they have gone through the complete nomination process to stand this command up to have all of its processes fleshed out to have all of the people assigned and to start seeing some initial results what we are doing is we are resetting the institution the enterprise of the United States Army and the results mainly in science technology and material but in other things like concepts etc in order to set the army up for future combat and that is the purpose of the whole thing the Chief of Staff made an important point and I have said it and I want to build on it because I have said this to the Army staff and I have said this to Congress as we have made briefings to them and it is important that I say it to you all we are at IOC as I have told the Army staff we have to be comfortable operating in the grave for some amount of time there may be things we pull into the organization and then later move them back out as we evolve and learn as the AFC commander comes in and gets control of his organization but that is part of the culture we are trying to build is the flexibility to adapt your organization your processes to the needs at the time and so even the build out the stand up of the organization itself is going to see that change you may see today in terms of org charts or what not there may be changes I am confident there will be changes big ones before we get to FOC and even after FOC if this organization does not live, grow, learn then it is missing something and that is the culture we are trying to build I would only add is that the Congress has afforded us a lot of authorities associated with talent management to hiring as well as contractual authorities and we have to implement these authorities and exercise them so it is over the last three years we have been granted a lot of authorities to the committees of jurisdiction and this is part of this evolution so we have time for one more question it is going to go to Corey Dixon with Stars and Stripes thanks guys kind of following up on what General Emilia was just saying you got your buddy there, aren't you right well FOC has already got a question we will follow up do you guys have a commander in mind is it fair to say you guys have a commander in mind commander in mind we have made a nomination that nomination is not yet public it will be made public at the appropriate time when it is delivered to the senate services committee for confirmation when do you see having him him or her actually in place and then have you guys looked any more the last time you guys were kind of looking at the forms of our civilians have you guys made any more decisions on that kind of make up is there a ratio that's a talent based task issue you know defer to the commander but when do you see having the commander in place well we hope soon but the senate has to work its will so obviously as soon as possible we do have a chain of command still in place and they'll be able to begin the process of IOC with that team we have and start beginning the build out so the army knows how to function when the head guy isn't around and so we'll continue to move forward just want to follow up to court general milley well let me just say thank you all for your time today your questions it's very good to talk with you all as I mentioned earlier this is the biggest organizational change for the army in 1973 and in 1973 brought changes that were revolutionary to the service and really made some fantastic improvements we're confident that the stand up of army futures command and its eventual fully operational capability status will really deliver as we've said a few times the tools weapons equipment we need when the soldiers need them to fight and win those future fights that's what this is all about and so I appreciate the hard work that has gone into standing up army futures command the process of selecting this great city and I couldn't be more pleased with the team we have here to make that happen so we look forward to updating you as AFC continues to evolve and we'll do that but thank you very much for your time today ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for coming really appreciate your time and the flexibility given the amount of time that we had today to spend with these army senior leaders if you have additional questions please let us know over at OSDPA or even better it and we'll make sure that you get answers to the questions that you have thanks again have a good day